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Emotional Resilience: The Power Of Books To Help Kids Deal + Heal
927 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we delve into the world of developmental bibliotherapy and how it can be a valuable tool for anticipating and addressing emotional issues children face. We'll discuss how the simple act of reading books can help kids navigate new or confusing situations, both in the classroom and at home.
Discover the magic of using stories as a means to relate to a child's own experiences, emotions, and unspoken feelings. "Name it to tame it" is the key principle we'll explore, where children gain a more objective understanding of their problems and emotions, ultimately empowering them to face and resolve these issues.
Miss Beth also shares a few fantastic book recommendations that are perfect for helping children build emotional resilience:
- "The Rabbit Listened" by Cori Doerrfeld: Learn why it's perfectly okay to seek comfort from a close friend when facing tough times.
- "Catching Thoughts" by Bonnie Clark: Encourage children to understand their emotions by exploring their thoughts during difficult moments and recognizing that all feelings are temporary.
- "The Breaking News" by Sarah Lynne Reul: This picture book addresses children's anxiety about disturbing news through a story of a shaken community recovering its strength through small acts of kindness.
- "Come With Me" by Holly M. McGhee: Witness how small acts of kindness and courage can spread positivity in challenging times, as a girl seeks guidance from her parents on making a difference and learns the impact of friendly gestures.
- "When I Feel Scared: A Book About Feelings" by Dr. Sharie Coombes: This book provides children with the opportunity to explore their emotions and helps them understand and manage their feelings.
Join us on this episode as we explore the world of developmental bibliotherapy and how it can help children face their problems, emotions, and issues with a deeper understanding and resilience.
More books here: amazon.com/shop/bigcityreaders
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Transcript
Introduction to Bibliotherapy
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, my friends, and welcome back to The Play on Words. It's me, Ms. Beth, and today I have a short episode for you. We're going to talk about a few of the books that I love to use to help kids make sense of
00:00:20
Speaker
their feelings. Now, if you want to hear me read a few of these books, I do have a few episodes where I just read for kids. This is the why behind it. And if you like to catch me live on morning news, then you've probably heard me talk about this already. I have shared this with a few stations this week, but I thought I would share it here on the podcast for anyone that wants to just listen
00:00:48
Speaker
in the five-minute walk or drive that you have. Let's
Role of Books in Anticipating and Solving Problems
00:00:54
Speaker
talk about bibliotherapy. What is a technique that can be used to help kids or adults, it doesn't just have to be kids, anticipate an issue before it becomes a problem?
00:01:11
Speaker
So, we would often use books to help introduce a new experience or in this case, at this time, a confusing time. It can be done in the classroom or at home. So, if you're a teacher, this is something that you're probably really familiar with. Maybe you don't realize how much you use this, but that might look like for classroom teachers if you're introducing
00:01:36
Speaker
a new student to the class. You're probably going to go and get a book and read aloud to your class beforehand. There's just so many rich books that we can use to help process and name things we're feeling.
00:01:53
Speaker
So when you are having a new baby or maybe your child's friend is adopting a new baby or maybe there's going to be a fire drill for the first time or maybe your child is feeling worried about starting a new school year. We're going to turn to books because if we read a story or if we read aloud a story,
00:02:18
Speaker
about a child or about a character who's worried about the same thing or is feeling the same thing. It helps us or it helps kids understand that they're not the only one feeling this way. We want kids to feel special, of course, but when it comes to feelings that might be new or overwhelming or scary,
00:02:40
Speaker
We want to make sure that kids know that this is not rare. There are other people that feel this way. Maybe the story is about an animal. Maybe it's not a person. But when we, through reading aloud to kids, a story that is similar to their own lives, or a story that is similar to the emotions they might be feeling, but maybe they're not able to name them yet,
00:03:06
Speaker
children are able to deal with it more objectively, which then in turn helps them face and understand their own new experience or problem or feeling that they're having. So you've probably heard the phrase, name it to tame it. If kids can't really name what they're feeling, we're just going to see the reactive behaviors. But if we can help them name the feelings,
00:03:35
Speaker
then we're going to help them be able to tame those feelings.
Emotional Understanding Through Stories
00:03:39
Speaker
I'm going to share a couple of books that I love. The first one is The Rabbit Listened. The Rabbit Listened helps kids understand that it's okay to sometimes just ask for someone to be close to you when something hard is happening or when you're processing something hard.
00:03:59
Speaker
I love to use this book because, you know, we will see kids throw a fit or, you know, in this book, there's, you know, the rabbit comes along and just listens to a child who's upset that his tower fell down. And that might feel like a small thing in comparison to a big
00:04:25
Speaker
real life feeling your child is having or a real life fear about something more catastrophic. But when we can take it and simplify it in a really small way, this child is upset because his tower fell down.
00:04:43
Speaker
And the thing that everyone offers, so every animal comes along and offers a different strategy. One says, let's scream about it. One says, let's knock someone else's down. All of these behaviors that we see kids having and using are the things that the other characters, they're all animals suggest. And none of that feels good to the character, the main character in the book, but what comes along
00:05:11
Speaker
at the end is the rabbit and the rabbit just listens. And then just by listening to the character, he's able to come up with the plan. He's able to process his feelings. This is the most, this is the book I think that should be on every single person's library, home library, classroom library, because even though it's something so small, right, a tower being knocked down, we think it's so small, but
00:05:39
Speaker
at that time with your toddlers or your big kids, that might be the most relatable entry point of being able to name how they're feeling. And when we can name how we're feeling about small moments, that's how we slowly build it up to name how we're feeling and process bigger emotions and issues that we are seeing. So these books, of course, I'm sharing right now in a time that kids are probably feeling our stress and sadness and anger
00:06:07
Speaker
and fear, and we want to help them process that they might be feeling that from us too. If they're old enough, they're probably understanding a little bit more about what's going on. But these are just also helpful books for any life experience that kids might face.
00:06:29
Speaker
So I'm just going to name a couple. I will link in my show notes a couple more books that you can get at your local library, or I'll link by Amazon list too, if you want to just order them straight from Amazon. But the next one I love, number two, is called Catching Thoughts by Bonnie Clark.
00:06:48
Speaker
And
Visualizing and Managing Emotions
00:06:49
Speaker
this book is really one of my favorite. If you're at all versed in the child therapy or any kind of therapy world, I believe this book
00:07:00
Speaker
I'm not sure, so don't quote me on this, but after reading it, it sort of sounds like it follows internal family systems, which is a type of therapy that names different parts of you. You can help kids do this by, you know, just rephrasing for them if they say, I'm so, or like, I'm angrier. I'm bad.
00:07:22
Speaker
Helping them rename it like, ooh, a part of you feels bad. A part of you feels angry and just right sizing that feeling or that thought that we're having. And so it's not you, it's this part of you that's feeling that way. You.
00:07:37
Speaker
are not bad. You are not always angry. A part of you feels angry right now. So Catching Thoughts does this beautifully. It encourages children to understand their emotions by exploring their thoughts during difficult times and helping them recognize that their feelings are just temporary. So there's balloons on the cover. And so I hope I'm not mixing up my books, but I think it talks about Catching Thoughts.
00:08:05
Speaker
um like they're balloons um and we we can catch those thoughts we can observe them we can say oh that's just a thought you you can say that thought can come along we don't need to push away and say no no no that thought can't be here we say that's just a thought that's not me that's a thought that's passing through that's a feeling that's passing through and when we allow those thoughts and feelings
00:08:32
Speaker
to be present and to pass through and to exist, then it makes them feel a lot less scary. If we think that they're here forever and this is how I am now, it feels impossible. But if we just let them pass through, they will not stay.
00:08:49
Speaker
Um, that, uh, that brings me to my next book, Ruby, Ruby catches a worry. Ruby finds a worry. No, sorry. I'm mixing this up in my actual notes. It'll say the exact titles, but Ruby catches a worry and Ruby is, has a worry and it follows her all around.
00:09:13
Speaker
and she does not know what to do with it and it gets really, really big. Ruby finds a worry, sorry, it's Ruby finds a worry. But Ruby has this worry and it gets bigger and bigger until it's so big that it's all she can do is think about it. So all of these books I think are also like a great resource for adults because sometimes our own grief and
00:09:40
Speaker
Fear and pain is so big that it's really hard to be able to right size it and know what to do and say with kids. But if you have these books and you could just pull them off the shelf, you'll start to, you'll be like, oh yeah, here's what I say here. Here's how I help this child. But in this story, Ruby is happy and curious. But then she finds something she wasn't planning on. She finds a worry.
00:10:05
Speaker
And it keeps growing and what she finds, spoiler alert in the end, is that everyone has worries and
00:10:18
Speaker
The great way to get rid of them is to just share, share what you feel, and that worry becomes the right size. You know, if you've listened to any of my back to school pep talks or helping kids with anxiety in the classroom or at home, the biggest thing we want to remember is that anxiety often comes from a lack of information.
00:10:46
Speaker
So we can provide information for kids that's age appropriate. And then we can also right size their fears. So if we're talking about fears about school, we can right size their fears, they might think, I'll never get to see you again.
00:11:04
Speaker
So we can right size that and say, yeah, it feels like a really long time to be apart. You're going to be at school and you're going to be doing this. You're going to name all the things that they're going to do. I'm going to be at work and I'm going to be doing this. Name some of the things that you're going to be doing. And then when the bell rings, we'll get to be back together. So we're right sizing it that it does feel like forever, but we're going to tell them the amount of time that actually we're going to be apart.
00:11:28
Speaker
So Ruby Finds a Worry helps us remember how to tell kids how to right size the problem that they might be experiencing and that anxiety is temporary and that it's always, always better to share it. We don't want to hide it. We don't want kids to think that the way they're feeling is rare. That is the last thing we want. You are not alone.
00:11:55
Speaker
what you're feeling is not too big. It's not unusual. It's okay to say it. You know, they're just thoughts. They're just worries. They're passing by. And then here's what we can do. So
Finding Positivity During Difficult Times
00:12:11
Speaker
that brings me to my next book, Come With Me. And Come With Me is
00:12:17
Speaker
an amazing story that I think was inspired by Mr. Rogers. If you know, Mr. Rogers is famous for saying when there's something scary going on in the world or when there's a tragedy and you just feel helpless. This is for both kids and adults, right? When you don't know what to do,
00:12:44
Speaker
look for the helpers, look for the helpers. So this story come with me is about, you know, when we see so much news about fear or scary things or ugly hatred,
00:13:01
Speaker
The main character asks her dad or her papa what she can do to make the world a better place. And he says, come with me, come with me. You hear that phrase, just come with me throughout the story. And they walk
00:13:19
Speaker
all over their city and see lots of people and it's kind of like the looking for the helpers. They go and they look in the world and one at a time they see these small and maybe what we would call insignificant moments and how they really matter in making the world a more beautiful place.
00:13:46
Speaker
I never want to say we don't want to look at the things that are happening. We need to be informed. We need to be aware and we need to fight for the things that we want to change and do the most that we can do. But then we also need to know when to say, that was enough. That was enough information for me today. That was enough information for my child today.
00:14:12
Speaker
what can I do now? We can look for the helpers, we can say come with me and we can look for the beautiful moments and the beautiful tiny parts of our world. And I just think that's a beautiful story. So these are some of my favorite books to help kids
00:14:31
Speaker
process their emotions and explore their emotions. I have a ton more of these books that I love. And I think that they're really important to have in the classroom and at home, while it might not be age appropriate, or maybe your role if you're a teacher to be introducing these
00:14:54
Speaker
Horrible things that kids unfortunately shouldn't unfortunately have heard about but shouldn't have to hear about. Well, you might not have that role of introducing it. You can hold this space for
00:15:08
Speaker
letting kids explain and name and hopefully tame their feelings. So while I'm not in the classroom anymore, I do love to help classrooms all over the world and families all over the globe. So if you have a favorite book from this list, I'd love to hear which one it was.
00:15:28
Speaker
or if you need directions on a specific category or emotion or experience that your child or your family or your classroom might be dealing with and I would love to direct you to some of my favorites that will help with with these big
00:15:48
Speaker
big and little feelings in your life. So please send me an email or a message and I would love to help you.
Engagement and Further Resources
00:15:57
Speaker
If I can, you can reach out to hello at bigcityreaders.com or message me on Instagram at bigcityreaders.
00:16:04
Speaker
And if you found this explanation helpful, feel free to share it with a friend or rate and review this podcast so that other people can hear about it. My goal here is to provide access to digestible education for both parents, caregivers, and teachers.
00:16:24
Speaker
So I hope that that helps and is a way that you can also be sharing the helpers or saying, come with me, here was a good part. So maybe that's in some of the stories that I've already shared here on this podcast for kids to listen to. Or if there's another resource that I can point you to, please let me know. I will see you all very soon. Bye.